STRONG BY NAME,STRONG BY NATURE, changing everything, my second life

My name is Barbara Strong.
I have no home, I own 60 kilos of stuff. I am debt free. I don't work which means i have the freedom to use my time in a way that benfits me my family and which ever community i live in. I am always busy helping and creating and I feel that i am free.

I am now an artist and writer, and i maybe more that i havent discovered yet having given up an wonderful career of 20 years truly empowering 1000's of long term unemployed and disadvantaged people to find their way out of benefit dependancy to employment with p
I have over the last 6 years entirely changed my life, and hope to share the journey, the lessons ive learnt because if i can do it, anyone can!!

one of the first changes I made on this road to a second life, was to change my surname name legally to Strong, to reflect the person I am and have always been and I expect always will be. I was never the child my parents raised, or the wife my ex-husband married, I was me and I looked for myself and I found Me and I found that I was Strong and before I discovered that I thought I was scared, frightened, small, poor and a victim, and in many ways my life reflected those beliefs until I changed.

For as long as I can remember, I always felt I was not the person I was meant to be; that the influences all around me, especially my parents but also the influences around me, my “class”, my education, my ex-husband, my culture, society, the media, were all telling me who I was and how to be and yet deep inside none of it felt right and so for a long as I can remember I have been on a quest to change and to find myself, who I really am.

And I have. I am Barbara Strong, by name and by nature, always a work in progress, I continually seek to learn, grow and change. My journey of change was not easy, it took a lot of personal courage. I was prepared to go to the deepest fears of my past, to face them, go through and come out the other side.most people just aren’t ready to face that kind of fear and accept the consequences of that, loosing people, loosing your sense of yourself, of everything that you know. Believe me, it was not easy. But now I reap the benefits from having that courage.

The universe has rewarded me. I now consider myself to be free. It may not be every ones idea of freedom but I am free. I am not rich but then I never wanted to be rich. I am debt free and no longer need to work but choose to help people on my journey. I have the time now to be able investigate my creativity, my dreams and my desires and to continue to work on myself for the benefit of me, my children and family, my friends, my community and I hope to leave a positive dent on this planet.

(image above -providing books and basics to kids in Nepal after earthquake)

I am now 53 years old and since I was 26 I have been trying to change myself whilst raising two kids as a single mum with limited resources both financial and emotional, and a huge poverty and victim mentality. I begun my journey with books from the library which were free and took absolute opportunity of any free online resources and cheap or free live training. Through most of my 20s and 30s I made changes but they were small and very slow.

At 40 I had a massive epiphany, one of those amazing life changing moments and I realised I had spent my entire life in fear and terror and that pretty much every decision or non-decision I had made, big and small, came from that place, fear and terror. I decided at that moment I would tolerate this in myself no more. I was half way through my life. I refused to live the second half of my life in fear and terror. And so I spent the next six and half years actively pursuing and applying all manner of personal development courses, training,reading, listening and learning, largely NLP based. I worked my arse off, refusing to hide from myself, facing my bullshit, pushing myself into frightening and scary situations, building my bravery muscle until I knew the truth, the big truth, that my greatest fear and terror was to be honest with my family and let go of the fear and terror they, through no real fault of their own, had instilled in me.

This was by far the most frightening thing I have ever done, bringing to the surface memories of fear, night terrors, muscle spasms and agoraphobia as I finally took the lid off the can of worms I had been keeping sealed for so many years. I knew there were powerful and long reaching consequences to me doing this but I also knew that to be free in the present I had to be free from the past and so I did it. I faced my greatest fear, I released myself from my fear and terror from my past and quickly after that the universe just kept giving to me as more and more pieces of who I am came together.

I was 47 years old and I had changed. I had the greatest sense of myself and I felt free. But I looked around at the world I still lived in, London, my career of 20 years, my home of 28 years, my grown sons living their lives independently of me (as it should be) and all of it was about who I was and this life situation no longer fitted the person I had become. I needed a new life.

So at 48 years old, having never travelled before I went to India planning to travel for 1 year, which became 2 and half years. I returned to UK after living in India, Thailand, Nepal, Cambodia and Laos and decided to sell my home and everything I own.

I now live a nomadic life travelling between Thailand, Nepal and the UK to see my family. I own about 60 kilos of stuff in small boxes in each country and I live a simple happy life. I am by no means perfect, no, no, not at all, I work hard to rectify mistakes I made as a young scared broken mum, I have many habits that still relate to my past, there are many experiences I have not had and many I don’t even know that I want. My first life was so small and impoverished that I am now experiencing many firsts in my 50’s. Every day is an opportunity to try something new and step outside of my sense of what I think is possible and as always, change still it isn’t always easy but I remain determined and as always will push myself if I have to. Its worked so far.

(image- blessing by entire family i lived with up in the mountians in Northern Laos)

(image -my first mushroom shake)

My interests (these are main things)
I am big into personal development, my own and others especially women and those who are at disadvantage in any given society or culture. I’m into quantum theory, NLP, self-hypnosis.

I actually don’t enjoy travelling that much. I tend to be a settler. I get to a place and settle into the neighbourhood until I have to go, often coming back to the same place when I return. I love being in new cultures and getting down and dirty with the local people. And that’s why I always learn the local language.
I love Languages (as I love communicating in any language) I am learning Thia, can speak Nepali, French and can write Hindi.
I am very spiritual and really interested in Buddhism especially Hinayana path. I’ve attended to Vipassanas and meditate often and read a lot about dhamma.

(image - 1day meditation course-Wat Suan Dok,chiang mai)

I am an artist and I paint on canvas with acrylics. I have had 2 exhibitions and all sales went towards rebuilding lives and homes in nepal.

(image above - one of my paintings - 3 generations of nepali women)

I am now beginning to write.
I still like a bit of adventure, and recently spent a month in Ladhakh at 5700 km in minus 30 degree temperatures. needless to say there weren't many other foreigners there. I like doing things with other people so don’t always do everything I want. I totally dig white water rafting, ready to have a go at wall climbing, abseiling and ziplining. Done 2 skydives already.

I love cooking and trying new foods and am considering offering food tours around all the local food outlets in Thailand.

(image above - yummy thia food)

I love dancing especially to music of black origin, soul, r n b, hip-hop, urban but not too grimy, house, the funkier the better, don’t mind a bit of psytrance, EDM, and just adore deep roots dub reggae. I am a disco diva, a snake hipped ghetto grannie.

So why am I here.
Firstly, to share my story and inspire others. I’ve been told many, many, many times, I inspire people and that’s a huge compliment and has in the past made me feel uncomfortable, but it has been said so many times I now accept it. If through my honestly sharing my journey, my ups and downs, if I encourage someone else to have the courage to step outside of their comfort zone and do something differently, then I have made that little dent on the planet. I hope to share techniques and ideas that I have applied thus far to bring me to my change with others.

I am also creative and have been actively encouraged to write both about how I changed and also about my travels, which have definitely been on the road less travelled and about my experiences living largely with local people in every country I have lived in. In the longer term I would like to write a book(s) I am a strong communicator both spoken and written and being here on Steemit as a place to begin investigating this for my future. I already post a lot on facebook and I may as well be here and maybe earn a few dollars along the way.

I am here to be part of the revolution, I fundamentally and fully believe in blockchain technology, crypto currency and decentralisation. I may not fully understand it all but I deeply get it. I want to part of something that has the potential to empower those utterly disenfranchised, especially as I have lived in some of the poorest countries in the world. Steemit and crypto-currency is just another layer of my personal development journey and I hope to inspire others to dip their foot in too. I am also here for my kids, to take the risk first and show them the way forward. My eldest son had bitcoin years ago but spent it all on weed on silk road, not having any real idea at the time what its real value and potential was.

I here to continue to grow. Just because I am not familiar with this technology yet doesn’t mean it is not of use and I am an open minded free-thinking human and for me to ignore this would be contradictory to everything I have achieved thus far in my life. Me and crypto was inevitable.

So that's my introduction!!
Thankyou to @connecteconomy for encouraging me to use steemit
and thanks to steemit community for all the advice here. it was at times overwhelming.
It has taken the best part of a day to write this introduction post.
I'm not yet sure how to credit people for help, I went back and forwards sooooo many times for guidance on absolutely everything but I will come back to your pages and comment on your guidance in appreciation.
I've definitely got some stuff to learn about images but its done

I do hope you found my introduction interesting
Please feel free to ask me any questions-I've not got much to hide
Anyone more experienced on steemit, please I am happy to have feedback on improvements

Looking forward to getting to know more of you and sharing and supporting you on your journeys
my regards
@beestrong